Hood of Death (17 page)

"Hey — how'd you get in so easy? Gotta have a reservation?"

"Yeah. Or give him an engraved picture of Lincoln. He's collector."

"Thanks, ole goodbuddy."

The Chinese returned with another, thinner Chinese, and Nick got the impression that the bigger man wasn't made of fat — you might find hard flesh under that appearance of plumpness. The big man said, "This is our Mr. Shin, Mr..."

"Deming. Jerry Deming. Here's my card."

Shin guided Nick aside while the maitre d' resumed channeling the fish. The man with the woman in red was taken right in.

Mr. Shin showed Nick three lovely meeting rooms that were empty, and four even more striking with their decorations in place and parties in progress.

Nick probed. He asked to see the kitchens (there were seven), the rest rooms, the coffee bars, the meeting equipment, movie projection room, Xerox machine and the cloak looms. Mr. Shin was affable and thorough, a good salesman.

"Do you have a wine cellar or shall we send up from Washington...?" Nick let the question hang. He had seen the damn place from end to end — the basement was the only place left.

"Right this way."

Shin took him down a wide flight of stairs near the kitchen, produced a large key. The basement was big, well lit, and built of solid concrete block. The wine cellar was cool, clean, and stocked as if the bubbly were going out of style. Nick sighed. 'Wonderful. We'll just specify what we want on the contract."

They went back up the stairs, "You are satisfied?" Shin asked.

"Perfectly. Mr. Gold will call you in a day or two."

"Who?"

"Mr. Paul Gold."

"Ah, yes." He conducted Nick back to the entrance lobby and handed him over to Mr. Big. "Please see that Mr. Deming has anything he wishes — compliments of the house."

"Thank you, Mr. Shin," Nick said. How about that! If you tried to con a free dinner with a pitch about hiring a hall they'd catch you every time. Play it cool and they bought the brick. He saw color brochures in a rack in the lounge and picked one up. It was a magnificent custom job by Bill Bard. The photographs were striking. He hardly opened it when the man he had dubbed Mr. Big said, "Come, please."

The dinner was sumptuous. He settled for a simple meal of butterfly shrimp and Steak Kow, with tea and a bottle of Rose, although the menu offered Continental and Chinese dishes in profusion.

Just comfortably full, over his last cup of tea he read the color brochure, noting every word in it because Nick Carter was a well-trained and thorough man. He went back and read one paragraph again.
Ample parking for 1000 cars
—
valet parking service
—
private marina for guests arriving by boat.

He read that
again.
He hadn't noticed any dock. He asked for a check. The waiter said, "Complimentary, sir."

Nick tipped him and went out. He thanked Mr. Big, praised the house cuisine, and stepped into the mellow night.

When an attendant came for his ticket he said, 'They tell me I can come over in my boat. Where's the dock?"

"Nobody uses it no more. They stopped that."

"Why?"

"Like I said. No business for it — I guess. Thunderbird. Right?"

"Right."

Nick drove slowly up and down the highway. The Chu Dai was built almost over the water, and he could not see any marina behind it. He U-turned and went south again. About three hundred yards below the restaurant there was a small marina, with one dock jutting well out into the bay. One light burned at shoreside, the boats he could see were all dark. He parked and walked back.

A sign said MAY MOON MARINA.

A wire gate barred the dock from the shore. Nick looked swiftly around, vaulted it, and walked out on the planking, trying to keep his footfalls from sounding like a muffled drum.

Halfway out the pier he stopped, just out of reach of the dim light. The boats were an assortment — the kind you find where the marina service is minimum but the dockage price is right There were only three that were over thirty feet, and one at the dock end that loomed larger in the darkness... perhaps a fifty-footer. Most were hidden under canvas coverings. Only one showed a light Nick walked quietly up to it, a thirty-six foot Evinrude, neat but of indeterminate age. The yellow glow from its ports and hatch barely reached the dock.

A voice sprang at him out of the night "Can I help you?"

Nick peered down. A deck light snapped on and he saw a thin man of about fifty sitting in a deck chair. He wore old brown khakis that blended with the background until the light outlined him. Nick waved a casual hand. "I'm looking for dock space. I heard it was reasonable here."

"Step down. They got some. What kinda boat you got?"

Nick went down the cleated gangway to the floating planks and climbed aboard. The man indicated a cushioned seat. "Welcome aboard. Don't git much company."

"I've got a twenty-eight-foot Ranger."

"Do your own work? No service here. Lights and water is all."

"That's all I want."

"This might be the place then. I get my spot free for being nightwatch. They have a man on days. You can see him nine to five."

"Italian boy? I thought someone said..."

"Nope. Chinese Restaurant up the street owns it. They never bother us. Want a beer?"

Nick didn't, but he wanted talk. "Love it My turn when I tie up."

The older man went into the cabin and returned with a can. Nick thanked him and snapped off the top, raised it in salute. They drank.

The old man snapped off the light "Nice here in the dark. Listen."

The city was suddenly far away. The rush of traffic was Overlaid by the slap-slap of water, the moan of a whistle from a large vessel. Out on the bay colored lights winked. The man sighed. "My name's Boyd. Retired Navy. You work in town?"

"Yes. Oil business. Jerry Deming." They touched hands. "Owners use the dock at all?"

"Did once. Had an idea folks might come along in their boats to eat. Damn few did. Too easy to jump in a car." Boyd snorted. "They own that cruiser out at th' end I guess you know the ropes. Don't pay to see too much around here."

"I'm blind and dumb," Nick said. 'What's their racket?"

"Li'l poontang and maybe a pipe or two. I dunno. Most every night some of 'em go out or come in in the cruiser."

"Maybe spies or something?"

"Naw. I had a word with a friend of mine in Navy Intelligence. He says they're O.K."

So much for my competition, Nick thought Still, as Hawk had explained, the Chu Dai outfit looked clean. "They know you're ex-Navy?"

"Naw. I told 'em I use ta be a hand on a fishing boat in Boston. They swallowed it. Offered me the nightwatch when I haggled about price."

Nick gave Boyd a cigar. Boyd produced two more beers. They sat for long periods in comfortable silence. The cruiser and Boyd's remarks were interesting. When the second can was gone Nick stood up and shook hands. "Many thanks. I'll come down and see 'em in the daytime."

"Hope you do. I can tell a good shipmate. You Navy?"

"No. Did my time Army. But I've been on the water a bit."

"Best place."

Nick drove the Bird down the road and parked it between two warehouses a quarter-mile from the May Moon Marina. He walked back on foot and found a cement company pier from which, hidden in the blackness, he had a fine view of Boyd's boat and the big cruiser. In about an hour a car stopped at the marina and three people got out. Nick's excellent vision identified them even in the dim light — Suzi, Pong-Pong and the slim Chinese he had seen at the head of the stairs in Pennsylvania and who might have been the man behind the mask in Maryland.

They strolled down the dock, exchanged words with Boyd he could not hear, and went aboard the fifty-footer. Nick thought rapidly. This was as good a lead as he was likely to get What to do with it? Get help and check on the cruiser's habits? If everybody thought the Chu Dai crew was so legitimate, they'd probably have that covered. A great idea would be to plant his beeper on the vessel and track it with a copter. He took off his shoes, slipped into the water and swam slightly out and around the cruiser. There were lights on her now, but the engines had not been started. He probed for a crevice into which he could wedge a beeper. Nothing. She was sound and clean.

He swam to the nearest small boat in the marina and cut off a length of three-quarter-inch manila mooring line. He would rather have had nylon, but the manila was solid and did not feel too old. With the line around his waist he went up the dock ladder and silently boarded the cruiser, forward of her cabin windows. He went around to the bay side and peeked in. He saw an empty head, an empty master stateroom, and then came to a porthole of the lounge. The three who had come aboard were sitting calmly, with the air of people waiting for someone or something. The slim Chinese went into the galley and came back with a tray bearing a teapot and cups. Nick grimaced. Opponents who drank booze were always easier to handle.

Sounds from the dock alerted him. Another car had arrived and four people were coming toward the cruiser. He crawled forward. There was no place to hide on the bow. The vessel looked fast and she had trim lines. There was only a low hatch on the foredeck. Nick secured his line to an anchor-bridle cleat with a tight bowline knot and went over the port side into the water. They'd never notice the line unless they used an anchor or tied up on their port side.

The water was warm. He debated whether to swim away in the darkness. He had not planted the beeper. In his soggy clothes and armament he could not swim fast. He had not removed them because stripped he looked like an arsenal and he hadn't wanted to leave all the valuable gear — especially Wilhelmina — on the dark dock.

The engines rumbled. He tested the line thoughtfully, pulled himself up two feet and threw two bowlines on bights — the seaman's bosun's chair. He had done a lot of strange and dangerous things, but this might be too much. Should he go for the copter?

Feet stamped on deck. They were releasing their dock-lines. They didn't believe in warming up their engines much. His mind was made up for him — they were under way.

He swung forward and grabbed the sheer of the bow, worked his rump into the loop of the line and forked his arms and legs along each side of the bow. The cruiser engines were revved up and water pounded his behind. He hitched himself higher as the fast boat roared down the bay. Every time she dipped into a swell, water slammed into his legs like the blows of a rough masseur.

In open way the cruiser's throttle was opened even more. She rammed through the night. Nick felt like a fly straddling the nose of a torpedo. What in hell am I doing
here?
Unload? The boat's sides and screws would chop him into hamburger.

Every time the boat bounced he was pounded against the bow. He learned to make V-springs of his arms and legs to cushion the blows, but it was a constant battle not to have his teeth knocked out.

He swore. His position was deadly dangerous and, he felt, ridiculous. Here I go! AXE's N3. Roaring down Chesapeake Bay ass backwards!

The cruiser could really travel. Nick wondered what kind of big twins they had in her. Whoever was on the bridge could handle a wheel, even if he failed to warm up engines properly. The boat thundered away from the Patapsco River, holding steady-on to her course. If there had been an amateur at the helm who had let the bow rock from side to side, Nick wasn't sure he could have held on against some of the swells that slammed into him.

Somewhere off Pinehurst they passed a big freighter and when the cruiser crossed the ship's wake Nick realized how an ant would feel trapped in an automatic washing machine. He was dunked and raised on high, banged and buffeted. Water; crashed upward on him with such force that some was forced up his nose, even against his powerful lungs. He choked and gagged, and when he tried to control the water with his breathing, he bounced against the sheer and the wind was knocked out of him again.

He decided he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there was no exit. The blows against his backside as it bucketed against the hard salt water felt as if they might emasculate him. What a decoration — castrated in line of duty! He tried to hoist himself higher but the bouncing, vibrating line threw him down every time he hauled himself up a few inches. They passed the big ship's wake and he could space his breathing again. He wished they'd arrive wherever they were going. He thought, //
they go out to sea and there's any weather running, I've had it.

He tried to estimate their position. It seemed as if he had been hammered like a yo-yo into the surf for hours. They must be off the Magothy River by now. He twisted his head to try and see Love Point or Sandy Point or the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. He saw only surging water.

His arms ached. His chest would be black and blue. This was hell on the water. He realized that in another hour he would have to concentrate to stay conscious — and then the roar of the engines died to a comfortable rumble. He swung again with his trunk above the bow wave. Relaxing, he hung in the two bights of line like a drowned otter being hoisted above a trap.

Now what? He brushed his hair from his eyes and twisted his neck. Idling up the bay, riding lights and masthead lights and cabin lamps a paintable picture in the night, came a two-masted schooner. No plywood plaything that, he decided, that's a baby built for the money and the deep sea.

They were bearing to pass the schooner port-to-port red-to-red. He hitched himself around to the starboard rim of the sheer, out of sight. It wasn't easy. The rope, hitched to a port cleat, fought him. The cruiser began to make a slow, tight turn to port In a few moments Nick would be presented to the eyes of those on the larger craft like a roach riding a bakery cake on a rotating window stand.